Lovesick, of course

[Lookatthemoon]

Hi, I hope I'm posting in the right place, but I feel as though this space might be the most sensitive to my situation.

About 5 or 6 years ago, I met one of my favorite people in the world.

He lived in a different city, but we have a very close-knit group of mutual friends. We had the whole sparks flying thing going on from the moment we met. The whole irresistibly attracted to each other physically and mentality, and everything in common.

We exchanged phone numbers as new friends, because at the time, I was considering moving to the city he was in (one of the reasons we started talking in the first place).

Over the course of the next few years, we would send each other texts every once in a while. They began with simple "how do you do's" and of course the more we got to know each other, became more and more intense: "i miss you's" and more. He travels quite a bit for his job, and every time he came to my city (maybe 3 or 4 times a year) we would make it a point to see each other. Over the years, we really did become closer and closer. Our hangouts when he was in town became more intensely physical and more serious conversations ("what the eff are we doing?", etc) would arise.

And here is the kicker, and why I am posting here, that for the majority of this time, we both had significant others. Neither of us has ever been married, but we were both in long term relationships (mine emotionally abusive, that took me me too long to get out of, his simply stale, both of us admittedly giant wusses.)

Of course I know this added to the bliss and the excitement of seeing him. ' no dummy.

However, many years and a lot of courage on my part later, I finally moved like i had wanted to so many years earlier, and we are in the same city. And I moved for myself, by myself, for a great job. Now here we are in the same city, and we are both single. I haven't been single for very long, so of course I'm not looking to jump into anything too soon. I'm playing the field because I am young and single and in a new town, but I don't really want to. We very obviously have very strong feelings for each other. We see each other about once a week. I'm not sure if I would call it dating or just "two friends who are maybe secretly in love with each other and go out for dinner and drinks and the occasional hookup". The other kicker in this story is this: his ex still lives at his house, although it has been nearly a year since they called it quits. She had not been working, so he is giving her all the time she needs to basically change her entire life around. But it has been nearly a year. So even as we hang out as two technically single people, I still feel a little shady about it.

We also continue to treat our time together as sort of the "fantasy" thing. We have such a wonderful time together, I think neither of us wants to quite yet bring it down with the serious talk. And like I said before, I've only been here for a couple of months, and don't want to rush anything.

But there will come a time when I believe we will have to have a serious talk. I'd like to see this go somewhere eventually. How long should I wait before I bring up the serious stuff and how should I do it? Or should I just take it easy and let him do it when he's ready? Any advice about how to deal with this situation as gracefully as possible would be appreciated!